What is Audio Researches best preamp period

Bbaxley2: What are you specifically looking for here that is lacking in the LS3? Anyone's "best" is always a subjective rating.

I too don't put much weight on a sweeping generality about all the products of a company. Wc65mustang: Why not share with us the two ARC models you owned? Were any of these by any chance: SP-14, SP-15, LS1, LS2, LS3, LS15, LS16, LS22? Any of these models I would avoid due to their (in my view) analytical presentation.

I currently run with the Callisto-Sig/Io combination and this clearly excels over the LS5/PH2 and BAT 31SE/P10 that preceeded it, but I would not describe the Aesthetix gear as smoking the ARC or BAT. The Aesthetix jupiter series simply portrays 3-dimensionality like no other products I have yet heard.

Since I have not heard the Ref2 or Ref3 with or without the Ref Phono, I will keep my comments to the models I know. As many people here know, I have tauted the LS5 (the III being my favorite due to tonal coherency over the II) as a wonderful line stage - I owned the LS5 for 7+ years. I have yet to hear anything else that comes close in the $1800-2300 range. Great great bloom, dynamic contrasts but the typical "out in the room" ARC presentation.

The SP-10 has a killer phono stage? Oh yes, but very noisy. I owned this for 8 years before the LS5 and only then did I realize how terrible the line stage was in the SP-10. This product really only makes sense for the phono die hard. And even then, I would consider using its tape outputs to drive a more refined (read: modern) line stage. This into the LS5 might be awesome....but kinda pricey.

If I was to stay with the ARC line, I too would look for models that did not use the 6H30 russian supertube. I had these in the BAT 31SE which I liked a lot, but there was no opportunity to customize the sound as Albert points out. It is amazing how you can tune the tonality and dimensionality of your system by trying various Telefunken, Mullard, Siemens and now the EI tubes.

So my vote goes for the LS5 if you're on a "budget". If you can afford more, it sounds like Albert's recommendation would be the next step or maybe the LS25 MK I as a third option as it too does not use the 6H30.

John

Hi Tom, good to hear you're still enjoying the LS5. It is indeed a unit that we hold onto for a long time as it takes a serious expenditure to get the next level of refinements in a line stage.

Just for clarification here, I don't think I ever felt the LS2 was bright....not any more so than the typical "in your face, way out into the room" presentation of much of the ARC line. Tonally the LS2 was fine when I heard it. But simply, it was hands down the most unmusical line stage I had auditioned up to that time (1995) when I bought the LS5II. Coming off the SP-10, with all of it's little problems, the LS2 was on the opposite end of the field in terms of enjoying the music; the ambient information was all but gone. And I never understood the sillyness of putting XLR connections on a product that was single-ended. The extra input and output stages to accomplish pseudo-balanced signals only gets in the way of the music.

John

GMorris: I heard the LS2 vs. the LS5 at an ARC dealer in SaltLakeCity. This was right after a weekend home trial of the SonicFrontiers SFL-2 over that year's Memorial Day weekend. I remember this time well as I was having a most difficult time finding a musical replacement of the SP-10 that I sold before I found a replacement. That was not very bright!

I quickly found the SFL-2 to not be musical at all so I went back to SLC to borrow the LS2. Afterall, both of these got the highly coveted Stereophile Class A rating. Well the LS2 was the same lack of musicality as the SFL-2. This was near the end of the LS2's production and the LS5 had already gone to a MK II status, so I gotta believe the LS2 I heard at the dealer was also a MK II. But I can't be sure.

The LS5 was also Class A rated but it was so far ahead of the SFL-2 and LS2, how they could be grouped together was beyond me. And the LS3 was also Class A rated. From that event forward, I realized how worthless these ratings had become.

The LS5II I got had 10 Sovtek 6922 tubes. I soon replaced these with the batch of RAM low-noise tubes I had been using with the SP-10. There was clearly an improvement, but not really all that significant. And even today, as I swap out Mullard, Siemens, Telefunken and Amperex tubes in my Aesthetix gear, these all have a more refined sound over the Sovtek, but the Aesthetix with the Sovtek tubes, as was the case of the LS5 with Sovtek tubes, sound pretty darn good. I gotta believe that no matter what you do with the one tube in the LS2, you are pretty much against the wall on performance. This unit needs a whole more help in the 3-dimensionality dept. than simply a tube swap.

John